Maritime workers board Flag of Convenience ships in national week of action

New Zealand mar­itime work­ers will be going up the gang­way this week to check out ships fly­ing “flags of con­ve­nience” and ensure that crew con­di­tions, wages, and health and safe­ty stan­dards are up to scratch.

The Inter­na­tion­al Trans­port Work­ers’ Fed­er­a­tion (ITF) is hold­ing its New Zealand Flag of Con­ve­nience Week of Action this week, end­ing Fri­day 3 June 2011.

Mem­bers of the ITF-affil­i­at­ed Mar­itime Union of New Zealand will board ves­sels in New Zealand’s main ports, and go over doc­u­men­ta­tion such as wage books, talk to crews, and inspect the sea­wor­thi­ness and safe­ty of ships.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Joe Fleet­wood says this is part of an ongo­ing inter­na­tion­al cam­paign to improve stan­dards in the ship­ping indus­try.

He says that there have been a num­ber of seri­ous inci­dents on over­seas ves­sels, includ­ing FOC ves­sels, in New Zealand ports and in and around New Zealand waters in recent years.

“We have had ongo­ing inci­dents rang­ing from under­pay­ment of wages, fail­ure for crews to be returned home at the end of their con­tracts, mis­treat­ment and abuse, all the way up to seri­ous injuries and deaths, and the sink­ing of ves­sels.”

Flag of Con­ve­nience (FOC) ves­sels are reg­is­tered in coun­tries with very lax or non-exis­tent reg­u­la­tion of the mar­itime indus­try.

FOCs pro­vide a means of avoid­ing labour reg­u­la­tion in the coun­try of own­er­ship, and become a vehi­cle for pay­ing low wages and forc­ing long hours of work and unsafe work­ing con­di­tions.

ITF New Zealand inspec­tor Gra­hame MacLaren says the week of action is intend­ed to con­vey a clear mes­sage to Flag of Con­ve­nience oper­a­tors who trade in New Zealand waters that they need to abide to basic ITF stan­dards.

“The main focus will be to tar­get FOC ves­sels with­out ITF agree­ments for the crew, but any oth­er for­eign flagged ves­sels will come under scruti­ny.”

The ITF is made up of 681 unions rep­re­sent­ing 4,500,000 trans­port work­ers in 148 coun­tries. It is one of sev­er­al Glob­al Union Fed­er­a­tions allied with the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Union Con­fed­er­a­tion (ITUC).